Twitter caves to Pakistani 'blasphemy' censorship requests

Twitter has honoured five requests made by a Pakistani
bureaucrat working for the country's Telecommunications Authority
to censor tweets and accounts it considered "blasphemous" and
"unethical".

According to the New York Times, the social network
agreed to shield certain tweets from the eyes of Pakistani Twitter
users at the request of Abdul Batin. The requests including
censoring crude drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, photographs of
burning Qurans and tweets from anti-Islam bloggers and an American
porn star.

This is apparently the first time Twitter has agreed to block
specific content in Pakistan since it introduced its country-specific censorship policy in 2012. The policy takes
into accounts local laws that apply to tweets and will consider
reactively withholding access to certain content if they receive
"valid and properly scoped" requests from authorised entities.
Despite this, the NYT claims that a number of accounts were blocked not
reactively, but in anticipation of the annual "Everybody Draw
Muhammad Day", which falls on 20 May.

The first time Twitter's censorship policy was enforced was in
Germany in 2012 and saw a neo-Nazi party -- which are not allowed
under German law -- banned from the social network. Since then it
has come into effect in several countries, although Twitter aims to
remain as transparent as possible using several mechanisms,
including partnering with Chilling Effects to to publish
notifications of when it withholds content, as well requests to
withhold it

Pakistan's oppressive blasphemy laws have been enforced in an
increasingly brutal manner recently, resulting in arrests, murders
and assassination attempts, which is why it makes it particularly
concerning that Twitter is complying with them. Twitter's defence
is that it would rather prevent a small amount of content than
contravenes local laws than have the whole site blocked, denying a
country the ability to use the platform at all.

Several rights groups have questioned the legitimacy of the
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, as well as Twitter's decision
to acquiesce to its requests. Wired.co.uk has put these concerns to
Twitter and will update this article if we hear back.